Mega Man 2Review

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Get your weapons ready.

By Lucas M. Thomas

"In the year of 200X, a super robot named Mega Man was created. Dr. Light created Mega Man to stop the evil desires of Dr. Wily. However, after his defeat, Dr. Wily created eight of his own robots to counter Mega Man."

Three sentences were all the plot it needed. After that introductory text and a dynamic camera scroll to the top of a skyscraper, we knew he was back. Mega Man had once again arrived, ready for a new battle to fight. It was a defining moment in gaming for NES players in 1989. And, today, it's a moment a new generation gets to experience for themselves -- Mega Man 2 has come to the Virtual Console.

There's a reason why Mega Man 2 is still so highly regarded today, even called the best Mega Man game of all by many of its fans. And that's because it just gets everything right, right from the beginning. The presentation is superb right from the start. The visuals are refined and clean. The music is some of the most sensational ever produced for the NES, and the gameplay is pure and focused, uncluttered by unnecessary extra elements. Mega Man 2 is a platformer and a shooter, meshed together and perfectly balanced. It's easy to see why it's still so praised.

Wily's bad bots got a lot bigger in Mega Man 2.

And now here on the Virtual Console, there's little to do but reiterate that well-deserved admiration that's been offered to the title for almost 20 years now. Though it's a game now almost two full decades old, it's still as dynamic and accessible as ever before and still the game that defined what Mega Man was all about.

If you're unfamiliar with the basic concepts of the early Mega Man games, here's a quick explanation: You play as Mega Man, the blue-suited robot hero out to save the world from Dr. Wily's evil Robot Masters. You can select the order in which you attack each of the eight original stages, and when you defeat one of the boss characters you earn the ability to use his signature weapon. When you challenge later bosses, then, you seek to find the right weapon in your amassed arsenal to take him out -- each Robot Master has a weakness to one of his evil allies' abilities. Like a grand game of Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Though the first Mega Man title on the NES set that basic structure of the series in place, Mega Man 2 was the game that built on that foundation and refined the formula. It featured eight Robot Masters instead of six, which became the series standard from then on. It introduced a password system to save your progress so you wouldn't have to play the whole game in one sitting, which became the series standard from then on. It brought in non-weapon items that helped Mega Man move around, energy-refilling E Tanks and the first on-screen appearance of Dr. Wily's Skull Castle, all of which became series standards from then on. Mega Man 2 did it all, and did it all excellently.

Mega Man 2 is also home to, undeniably, the best Robot Master weapon ever seen in the series -- Metal Man's Metal Blades. These overpowered buzzsaws could be flung out in any of eight directions and did massive damage to pretty much every enemy in the game. (Metal Man himself would die with just one hit from them.)

But it wasn't just the Metal Blades that made Mega Man's arsenal a blast in 2 -- he also got equipped with Flash Man's screen-freezing Time Stopper, Wood Man's spinning Leaf Shield and Heat Man's blazing Atomic Fire. These weapons were so defining that many later Mega Man games simply copied them again and again. Several subsequent Robot Masters would give our hero the power to stop time. The rotating shield appeared again in some form in pretty much every other Mega Man title, including the upcoming Mega Man 9. And the hold-down-the-button-to-charge-it mechanic fueling Heat Man's Atomic Fire became a core aspect of every game to come, starting with Mega Man 4 -- it became the basis for the Blue Bomber's charging Mega Buster.

The introduction of the Mega Buster in those later games, though, defeated the appeal of utilizing Mega Man's larger arsenal -- so Mega Man 2 remains the best example in the series of having a full array of weapons that are each fun to play with.

Top it all off with an iconic set of huge, screen-filling endgame bosses and a difficulty selector that lets you go back and play it all over again with more of a challenge the second time, and you've got all the reasons why Mega Man 2 continues to be held up today as the Blue Bomber's best adventure ever. We could keep on singing its praises for many more pages, but we don't have to. You should have already downloaded the game.

The Verdict

Capcom's intention with the upcoming Mega Man 9 is to mirror what made Mega Man 2 such a success -- and to emphasize the point, they've positioned this Virtual Console release of the game as a lead- in to the new title's WiiWare debut. The company's marketing tactics are sound here, as there's no better way to get yourself ready for Mega Man's next great adventure than by experiencing his greatest past quest. Let's also hope that strong sales of this, the first Mega Man that came to the VC last month and Mega Man 9 all together will encourage Capcom to continue to support Nintendo's retro download service with more of the Blue Bomber's past adventures -- because even though Mega Man 2 is the pinnacle, there are still several other spectacular sequels we'd love to revisit in Virtual Console form.